Wednesday, 21 August 2013

John Armleder's 'Quicksand' at the Dairy Art Centre

Hidden down a narrow lane off an old cemetery in Bloomsbury,
two prominent collectors Frank Cohen and Nicolai Frahm have opened a new
public, non-profit exhibition space this summer called the Dairy. Named for its
former role as a milk depot, the cavernous warehouse lends itself well to the
type of large-scale work and installations on show in this opening exhibition
of work by the Swiss artist, John Armleder. He is associated with the
improvisational and performative Fluxus and rejecting institutional or commodified
art. Armleder is instinctively transgressive. Wallpaper and painted walls
compete with hanging paintings made by splashing and pouring paint, resin and
glitter across canvasses. This is not the intuitive expression of Jackson
Pollock or the formal experimentation of British Painter, Frank Bowling, but an
attempt to challenge that urge we have to categorise art in order to seek some
certainty.

Armleder is an active curator of his own exhibitions and
this is evident at the Dairy. He enjoys mixing the work up so that aspects of
interior design muddle the distinctions. Walls are painted with stripes and 12 disco
balls (Global Tiki, 2000) hang from the ceiling in a diagonal progression
across the gallery. Plants sit within makeshift beds made from old tyres that replicate
planting in the yard outside. Boundaries collapse and the gallery becomes a
theatrical set in which viewer becomes performer.

In the ‘fridge’, Armleder has built an installation from
metal shelving stacked with bric-a-brac of lava lamps, old framed photographs
and stuffed animals. The explicit absence of good taste here touches on the
perilous territory of class and caste. But the universal interest lies in the
suggestion of domestic accumulation of stuff that threatens to physically
overwhelm us. Objects also potentially carry memories and aspirations. On a
sound loop, grating Hawaiian music plays its kitsch melodies as if we are stuck
in Honolulu airport. Armleder also piles up old art books and magazines in a messy
heap. Culture and human achievement are reduced to a stack of discarded rubbish.
But it uncannily echoes that desire for distinction between what’s valuable and
what’s junk. Who hasn’t struggled with that dilemma? Ultimately, everything
within this installation begins to resemble a flea market of the redundant,
creepy and worthless. There is the hint of mothballs, the charity shop and the
hoarder.

Such a critique of materials and their associations is most
explicit in a work that curls out across the floor merging metal shavings, wood
logs, bowling balls, art books and sand. Comprising both the raw and the manufactured,
these elements suggest formlessness and precision, functionality and waste. The
pliability of materials and their myriad uses embody the spectrum of human
activity but seem dumped on the floor as a levelling gesture. Perhaps the most puzzling
works are paintings made from simple, repetitive designs like spiders or
flowers, resembling stickers or potato prints. Paradoxically, made by the
artist in a painterly process, at the same time they suggest a universal, graphic
language.

In the entrance sits one of the artist’s ‘Furniture
Sculptures’ a fashionable looking lacquered bar top with stools covered in
various ‘lollipop’ colours. Imitating high-end design, the ‘sculpture’ doubles
up as counter you might find in a fashionable bar, but the piece maintains
Armleder’s frustration of clarity – for most of the time it is an inviolable
sculpture to be gazed at.

Armleder’s work is intentionally provocative and wilful.
Formally diverse and inconsistent, the exhibition conveys the playful
intentions of an artist first emerging from the 1960s. Conceptually, the work
is quite robust as Armleder consistently resists a singular ‘style’ or subject.
He quotes art history while turning
materials and objects upside down. Irresolution is the prevailing theme. You’ll
discover an exhibition packed with subversion, where teasing contradiction
becomes a value in its own right.

About Me

I am a London-based lecturer and writer specialising in Modern and Contemporary art. I teach at Christie's Education, Sotheby's Institute and work freelance at the Tate and the National Portrait Gallery. I am also a reviewer for Flash Art magazine.This blog is a place to comment on art and visual culture in London and abroad. I Tweet @Joshuaswhite and Five Senses can be found at http://joshuasimonwhite.blogspot.co.uk

For any publishing projects or media appearances, I can be reached at joshua@joshuaswhite.com. Formerly, I was a founding editor of Metrobeat (now Citysearch), New York, the first listings guide to the city and subsequently the launch producer of the BBC Online homepage.